The internal linking playbook for service sites

Internal linking distributes authority across your site and tells engines which pages matter most. Service sites usually under link to their commercial pages and over link to their blog. The fix is structural, not cosmetic.

The three rules

The steps below walk through this one stage at a time. Complete each step before continuing so nothing gets missed.

1. Every commercial page should receive at least five links from related content.
2. Anchor text should be descriptive and varied. Never use "click here".
3. Link from the body of a page, not just from the navigation or footer.

Common patterns

This breaks down into a handful of concrete points. Work through them one by one and note any that apply to your own site.

• Pillar to sub page (down).
• Sub page to pillar (up).
• Sub page to sibling sub page (across).
• Blog post to relevant service page (commercial).

How to run an internal linking audit

Most sites have never audited internal links deliberately. A simple crawl and spreadsheet exercise usually surfaces the highest value fixes within an afternoon.

1. Crawl the site and export every page with its inbound internal link count.
2. Flag commercial pages with fewer than five internal links.
3. List the ten highest traffic blog posts and check whether each links to a relevant service page.
4. Add two to three descriptive links per post, prioritising the most under linked commercial pages.

Anchor text patterns to avoid

Anchor text is a small detail with an outsized effect on both users and engines, since it is the clearest signal of what the destination page is about.

• Generic anchors like "click here" or "learn more" that carry no topical signal.
• The exact same anchor phrase repeated across dozens of links, which looks manipulative.
• Anchors that describe the linking page's topic rather than the destination's.
• Long anchor phrases that bury the actual keyword inside unrelated words.